I thought it was amazing. I have seen chickens fly into trees and fly back down. It is also amazing that they have so much room to just be chickens but are still bonded to this man. I love it.My parents thought it was weird when our chickens would run to me when I went outside. They were afraid of what the neighbors would think with my parade going to the mail box. They stopped at the end of the driveway and did not cross the road with me. They somehow knew the property line.

Chickens are actually quite smart! People think of them as dumb but it's a misconception due to the fact that people usually equate mildness with stupidity but it's NOT the same thing. My grandmother and I used to bring our lunch leftovers to the chickens that belonged to people who lived in a house behind my parents summer house and, even though this was done only during one single month of the year, they knew us and would remember us from one year to the next!

Rachel has a little dog that took a year to come to me. The only way she goes to my son is when he is handing out treats. There are 8 doggies running in a pack between our homes and they know what time each of us hand out treats.

There are a nest of squirrels in our yard last year. We now have 3 yearling squirrels running in our yard. I dump the leftover bird seen out under two oak trees. They know when I am coming out and stay just out of reach when I dump.

I miss having chickens. My last one ran in the pack of Chihuahua dogs and thought she was one. She would come when I called even better than the dogs. When my niece came over she would kiss her grandmom the go to the back yard and call my Chick Chick to give it hugs.

Your niece sounds like me - I would also always quickly kiss the people so I could go looking for the household animals.But, you could have chickens where you live now, don't you? I can't because the township doesn't allow any farm animals...

I have lost 3 kittens and a large cat to preditors. Chick Chick was attacked in NC and had her back ripped off. She went out on her own while the dogs were napping and had no protection. All we had there was red tailed hawks. The hawk tore off feathers, skin and fat from her back from her neck to her tail. I could see her muscles. I kept her in and cared for her so she lived.

Here we have other hawks and even Bald Eagles. I never got another cat though I really miss cuddling with one at night. I don't want to feed the hawks. People here have small pens for their chickens with wire net on the top. To me it is like keeping them in a cage. I don't like cages.

I don't like cages either but an enclosure built to protect from predators is a kind of cage that I could live with - it is how the downstairs birds live. And, as a matter of fact, that's the kind of chicken coop I plan to have back home -meaning, one with a roof over it- because that is the kind that everybody has there and I never thought of doing anything different. The chickens back home do come out during the day when people are around to monitor the situation but, once sunset starts, in they go for their dinner and roosting -at least, that's the way my grandparents used to do it. My cats NEVER EVER EVER EVER go out and, although my dogs do go out on their own, they do it for minutes at a time and within a fenced-in backyard so everybody is pretty safe. I am a maniac when it comes to safety and insist on the right infrastructure from day one: I have a chain with a combination lock on the gate so the dogs cannot push it open, boards around the ground perimeter of the backyard so the dogs cannot dig under the fence, strong lights that illuminate the entire backyard and motion-sensor ones on the driveway so I can always see where they are when they go out at night, buffer zones in both doors to the house, etc. I try my best not to leave anything up to chance...